Occupy Wall Street

[-JD-]

love this!

Gee I guess we should just be thankful to wait their tables and landscape their yards. God knows we don't want a bigger middle class...

I love the superiority and arrogance too. As if these guys are so superior that they will come and take all the middle class jobs. For numbers guys they don't seem to grasp the concept of 1%...



"No trader considers "regular work" to be a valid substitute for the cash-soaked, hookers & blow lifestyle. Most of the guys in New York are (probably?) more likely to pack up shop to move to Dubai, or try to start some kind of "e-business". I don't see these dudes entering the "Main St." job market, let alone "taking it over" with higher quality work.

Traders are the wrong scapegoat anyway. This whole note is disingenuous. Nobody is blaming the traders. I think the protesters (or at least the cogent ones and I know there are many who are not) have been smart enough to hate the game, not the low-level button pushers who make trades."

 

[JohnsD90]

"Let them fail" Ya we saw how that all worked when we let Lehman Bros "die"... All hell broke loose. The market lost almost half its value in little more than a couple of months, people were thrown out of there homes, lost their life savings, more jobs where shipped to China... Legitimate firms that were doing well were unable to get short term operating loans to do ANYTHING. The impact of "Let them fail" was going to be FREAKING huge. We were basically days away from fighting over road kill.

And if this is seen as what will happen if they continue to f*ck around, i doubt you will be seeing this happen again.

Let me put it to you this way, you have kid, you tell him that pan of the stove is hot, and that it will hurt if he touches it, he touches it anyway, and his finger is burned and he is crying, i know for a fact that he is going to steer clear of the hot pot on the stove because that hurt like hell.

So if the businessmen are under the assumption that if they f*uck up, that they will get get "burned" and potentially destroy the economy and go to jail, and Uncle Obama won't send them billions of bailout money, i doubt they are going to d*ck around with some fake pieces of paper...

 

[BrianSD_42]

So if the businessmen are under the assumption that if they f*uck up, that they will get get "burned" and potentially destroy the economy and go to jail, and Uncle Obama won't send them billions of bailout money, i doubt they are going to d*ck around with some fake pieces of paper...

John,

Of course they will. The ship may be sinking but they will plunder it for all its worth and then leave town when the fire can't be stopped.

READ MY EARLIER POST about Glass-Steagall.

It is time to restore Glass-Steagall and hold them actually accountable. I don't know why people are so against regulation. Replace the word regulation with 'law' because that is what it is. People have to live within the confines of the law, business can as well.

:bat:

 

[ur7x]

And if this is seen as what will happen if they continue to f*ck around, i doubt you will be seeing this happen again.

Let me put it to you this way, you have kid, you tell him that pan of the stove is hot, and that it will hurt if he touches it, he touches it anyway, and his finger is burned and he is crying, i know for a fact that he is going to steer clear of the hot pot on the stove because that hurt like hell.

So if the businessmen are under the assumption that if they f*uck up, that they will get get "burned" and potentially destroy the economy and go to jail, and Uncle Obama won't send them billions of bailout money, i doubt they are going to d*ck around with some fake pieces of paper...

We see the same thing happen over and over and over. We saw pretty much the same thing happen in the 30's and we are reliving that history. We learned nothing from the disaster that was deregulation of the 1980's 90's and 2000's.

And it wasn't Uncle Obama who sent in all of the bail out money... That was the CEO president George "W" Bush. You know the guy who claimed he would run the country like a business, while he almost bankrupted all of us.

The problem with your model is who gets burned... Its not just one kid, one banker, or one group of banker executives, shoot its not even one company or a block of share holders or unsecured bond holders... NO! when Lehman went down we ALL took one in the back side. If anything the people who got burned were all of US (spelled both ways) because Uncle "W" bailed them out, and got NOTHING for it. The POV that they have been burned and have learned their lesson is pure fail.

And don't look now, all of these people who were bailed out by the last administration, like the guy holding the letter, are STILL trading "fake paper" and NONE of them have spent any time in jail.

Guess what, the 99% here are just as against the corporate bailouts as the group who watch fox news and drink tea. The difference is the first group remember WHO got the bail outs and WHO gave them... The second group is a little confused.

 

[BrianSD_42]

Obama is no saint either on the topic of "fighting against Wall Street", this article in the Washington Posts highlights the situation quite well.


Wall Street’s resurgent prosperity frustrates its claims, and Obama’s - The Washington Post

Wall Street firms — independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks — are doing even better. They earned more in the first 2 1 / 2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration, industry data show.

A recent study by two professors at the University of Michigan found that banks did not significantly increase lending after being bailed out. Rather, they used taxpayer money, in part, to invest in risky securities that profited from short-term price movements. The study found that bailed-out banks increased their investment returns by nearly 10 percent as a result.

HMMMM something is not right here.


:keyboard:

 

[theizzardking]

i find all of this ****ing funny, the whole problem can be traced back to getting off the gold standard and the proceeding generation of deregulation.....and the funniest part is the only way it's going to get fixed is more government, which even the slightest suggestion of tends to infuriate people and make them call you a commie leftist bas****....imo, those people are just as stupid as the freaking anarchist , we need government,this whole the banks ****ed us, the major corporations ****ed us, ect ect ect ****ed us, is all stuff the government
was originally intended to protect us from, America need to pick us a god dam philosophy book from time to time....when capitalism was first being hashed out, one of the thoughts was to make laws free enough to allow commerce but stringent enough to protect the community as a whole, i mean we figured all of this **** out on a tribal level hundreds of years ago...hence the magna carta and our very own constitution ( kings and queens being the 1% basically)

some interesting reading
<iframe frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="border:0px" src="http://books.google.com/books?id=ota0BKtt1xYC&lpg=PA36&ots=x2MrjjGrIv&dq=magna%20carta%20and%20capitalism&pg=PA36&output=embed" width=500 height=500></iframe>
It's Not as Bad as You Think: Why ... - Brian S. Wesbury, Amity Shlaes - Google Books


deregulating trade and the finical markets and getting off the gold stanard is what ****ed us....everything else has just been leading up to it...
you can only fly so close to the sun before you get burned....

 

[CaliCal]

Occupy the Feds. that's what started the whole mess and then some since 1913

olice:

 

[ndcent]

This dude ****ing nails it!!!!!!

A Day in the Life of an Occupy Wall St. Participant - YouTube

 

[-JD-]

^That video was terrible and demonstrates the kind of anti-occupy ignorance that is becoming so rampant

 

[BrianSD_42]

no offense but just because some hipster is drinking Starbucks or wearing J-Crew doesn't mean they aren't correct about corporate greed. This is a STRAW-MAN argument.

The top YouTube comment on this video:

lots of problems with this video. he assumes there is a choice to not use corporations to provide for everything we need and want in our society. when almost everything is corporate owned, supplied, supported, ect... of course you are going to use corporate goods and services. it's better than starving, freezing, or being completely unemployable..... hell even value village is a corporation.

The idiot in the Youtube video is assuming that every protestor is anti-corporate or wants corporations destroyed - that is simply not true.

I don't support any of the anarchists or anti-capitalists at these protests. Capitalism is here to stay and that is a guarantee. But those few anarchists are not the majority of protestors. You can look at the videos of occupy Oakland, there were plenty of peaceful protestors including military veterans and then there were a few anarchists trying to destroy stuff. Unfortunately those a-hole anarchists have made the biggest impact in the media because the media loves sensationalism.

There are a lot of people at these protests who are "fed up" and simply want Wall Street to pay their fair share in taxes. It is possible for a group of Americas to want businesses to pay a fair share in taxes and yet still use the products sold in our capitalist system. The argument in the video is a copout because only a small portion of the individuals protesting are completely anti-corporate.

:ybrick:

ON THE PREVIOUS PAGE .. I posted about Glass-Steagall. I have had no responses so I assume that many people here do not have an education in finance or economics. If you actually know what you are talking about and understand the market system then feel free to respond, otherwise stop spreading ignorance.

RESTORE GLASS-STEAGALL.

:hatsoff:

 

[BrianSD_42]

I am going to give this thread a rest for a few months.

OWS is diverse and has some bad apples for sure but I think the media coverage is pretty poor. since my only sources are the media and their coverage sucks, I really dont know what OWS is about anymore. They also seem to be getting hijacked by crazy anarchists and homeless people.

peace out.

 

[ndcent]

T4R-Hippies.org

 

[ur7x]

^That video was terrible and demonstrates the kind of anti-occupy ignorance that is becoming so rampant

Yup.

The Occupy group is NOT anti "corporation" they are anti corporate GREED. They are anti corporate bailouts, they are anti off shoring American jobs to China. They are anti-tax breaks to corporations who make huge profits and then pay ZERO taxes. They are anti corporations being considered equivalent to persons in law. They are anti that corporations now have the ability to support political candidates with unlimited (and often unreported) funds. They are anti lobbying. They are anti special interest. They are pro-first amendment and are pro one person one vote democracy.

If anything they are very much for and against the very same things that the Tea party was for and against early on it its movement. It will be interesting to see if this "movement" gets side tracked, much like the Tea Party was.

 

[-JD-]

T4R-Hippies.org

Hippies?? what year are you living in?

 

[Kung]

ON THE PREVIOUS PAGE .. I posted about Glass-Steagall. I have had no responses so I assume that many people here do not have an education in finance or economics. If you actually know what you are talking about and understand the market system then feel free to respond, otherwise stop spreading ignorance.

RESTORE GLASS-STEAGALL.

:hatsoff:

Whilst (always wanted to use that word :biggrin2 I don't exactly have a 'background' in economics/finance, I've had a small education, and suffice it to say that I absolutely agree with you. I wrote a 20+ page paper concerning causes of and factors contributing to the economic crisis in 2008; and one of the points that I made was that more than a few legislative actions (Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking Act, the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, and many more), as well as the lack of enforcement of, or the removal of, some legislative pieces already on the books (such as the Glass-Steagall Act), made it TONS easier to do and get away with things that, IMHO, should NEVER have been done in the first place (such as the CDOs you speak about).

I actually had 'fun' writing that paper; I discovered that any number of commonly held beliefs are misguided at best, and patently false at worst.

One of them is that (and there are tons of varying opinions on this, but most professors I know would agree with this) contrary to VERY popular opinion, the "GSE's" (government sponsored enterprises) such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had nowhere near the impact on the 2008 economic crisis that people believe they did. The vast majority of subprime loans were made either by unregulated mortgage service companies that were not subject to federal supervision/scrutiny, or small banks that 'flew under the radar' (were considered small enough that, despite being subject to federal supervision, they simply weren't supervised or audited all that much, if ever).

In other words, the majority of 'toxic' loans were *NOT* made by banks.

Another point - and this is one of my favorites, and rather agrees with what I've often said - is that when lending increases have occurred, there have usually been a LARGER percent increase in the number of adjustable-rate PRIME mortgages obtained. To me, that seems to suggest that one of the points many try to make - that there are a lot of 'poor stupid people' being preyed upon by predatory lenders - isn't totally true.

Anyways...these are opinions, of course; I did quite a bit of research into this topic for my economics classes, though I will readily admit that I do not have an actual economics degree. I WILL say, however, that I've NEVER been one to be called ignorant - and then proceed to actually remain so - more than once. I do my best to read up on the subjects that I discuss.

 

[CaliCal]

T4R-Hippies.org

oink oink

 

[CaliCal]

HERE IS WHY WALL STREET IS OCCUPIED!! Tell it like it is brother....mirror - YouTube

 

[BrianSD_42]

[RE: angry protestor video]
HERE IS WHY WALL STREET IS OCCUPIED!! Tell it like it is brother....mirror - YouTube


Some good points some bad points.

The "go back to gold" argument doesn't hold water with any* published economists, either followers of Keynes or Friedman.

Leaving the gold standard has allowed the US GDP to rise consistently. The fact that wages didn't rise is unrelated to the Gold Standard pro/con argument (correlation != causation).



According to the World Bank (which is run by the US) US GDP in 1995 was 7.338 Trillion.

GDP in the US in 2009 (after the crash) was 14.044 Trillion.



YET WAGES ARE THE SAME AS 1995. This has nothing to do with the Gold Standard and everything to do with taxation and the distribution of wealth spread. Specifically, that some people make money from trading money (a lot of money is made), it is not taxed at the same rate as workers pay or spending, therefore the overall wealth shifts.

Hence the 1% argument and cries for higher taxation on corporations, financial trading, stocks ect. Also, many of the 99% are starting to disagree with the "trickle down effect" argument that is constantly stated by the right wing and businesses groups.​

The GDP doubled, and yet wages are NO higher on average for a college educated male. Also the cost of housing doubled so now we (I'm 29) are expected to buy housing at 2-3x its worth on 1995 wages.

All of this is confirmed by simply researching US disposable household income. People have less money in their pockets to spend because the price of everything has gone up (healthcare & housing in particular) while we earn 1995 wages.


[Click me]
World Bank, World Development Indicators - Google Public Data Explorer

:bat:

 

[xx_independent_xx]

i'm gonna skip work, if i even have a job, and sharpie a sign up showing my discontent with how things have been run. while i'm sitting on this sidewalk — sweaty, stinky, and more broke than the day before, the men in suits got richer.

everybody thinks they are owed something. get over it.

i could rant more, but i'm on my phone.

It's not about being "owed" anything. The country is ****ed up. There is no quick fix but we need to start somewhere.

 

[xx_independent_xx]

This dude ****ing nails it!!!!!!

A Day in the Life of an Occupy Wall St. Participant - YouTube

This guy is re****ed. He talks but has no evidence. Either way, he has no idea he's getting ****ed.